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Brewing beer, Communist style, in North Korea

PYONGYANG, North Korea — After a hard day of contributing to the cult of personality around the only Communist dynasty in Asia and vexing the world with a nuclear arms program, there is no better way for a North Korean cadre to relax than with a cold beer.

The impoverished state has quietly been brewing one of the highest quality beers on the peninsula for several years.

But because of poor infrastructure, limited trading links and minimal skills in the capitalist world, North Korean Taedonggang beer is likely to remain a little-known product.

The North Korean quest to produce decent beer began in earnest in 2000 when it began talks with Ushers brewery of Britain about acquiring Usher's plant in Trowbridge, England, which had shut down.

The North Koreans took apart the brewery, which had been producing country ales for about 180 years, shipped it piece by piece to Pyongyang and reassembled it under the banner of its Taedonggang Beer Factory.

By April 2002, the brewery was running again. In June 2002, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, whose fondness for expensive brandy and wines was well known, took a brewery tour.

"Watching good-quality beer coming out in an uninterrupted flow for a long while, he noted with great pleasure that it has now become possible to supply more fresh beer to people in all seasons," the North Korean state-run news agency, KCNA, said of Kim's tour.

Taedonggang beer, named for a river that runs through Pyongyang, is a full-bodied lager a little on the sweet side, with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

A few critics who have sampled it in Pyongyang say it is a highly respectable but not award-winning brew. It was available in Seoul until last year, and outsiders say the beer is far superior to the mass-marketed beers in South Korea.

At a Pyongyang hotel for foreigners, where goods are overpriced across the board, a small bottle of Taedonggang sells for half a euro, or 75 U.S. cents. On tap, the beer is a golden orange color with a clean, white foam.

Taedonggang is one of several brews in North Korea and it has quickly become the top brand, according to expatriates living in the reclusive country.

Park Myung Jin, an executive for the South Korean distributor Vintage Korea, which used to sell the beer in the South, said that Kim wanted his country to have a showpiece brewery.

The North taps into overseas markets for ingredients, Park said. It has abundant supplies of fresh water because its hobbled factories do not produce enough of anything to cause pollution problems.

Beer is not the drink of choice for most North Koreans, who prefer cheaper and stronger rice-based liquor.

Choi Soo Young, an expert on the North at the South's Korea Institute for National Unification, said the brewery was a favorite project of the ruling Communist Party, whose members can afford beer and make sure that the factory receives the necessary ingredients.

A North Korean defector, Jong Su Ban, who came to South Korea in 2000, said that impoverished farmers would scrounge for anything they could find to concoct their own home brews.

"We found corn flower and hops and made something that came out a weird milky color," he said. "At least it was fizzy like beer."

North Korea may have solved the riddle of making a robust beer, but it has not completely solved the problem of bottling it.

The brewery has occasional trouble sealing bottles properly and the glass it uses is fragile.

The transport system in North Korea is also a mess, making it unlikely that the beer can become one of the few legitimate exports from a country shunned by the developed world for its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons and a human rights record cited by the United States as one of the world's worst.

Park, the distributor, said that he had to print labels in South Korea and send bottles from China to package his beer for export.